Very nice, I like it.

There is actually a cookbook out there with recipes from Lord of the Rings. I've never seen Wheel of Time recipes before, how fun!

Ok. I haven't read the older books in a while, so my memory of little details is kind of fuzzy.

I can't think of an exact reference, but haven't we seen Rand using both his fat-man angreal and Callandor together?

I don't think Perrin is likely to try to raise Manetheren from the dead, but Faile could be willing. When Morgase says that she will speak to Elayne on their behalf for getting Perrin officially given the title of Lord of the Two Rivers (A Backhanded Request, page 659 in the hardcover) , Faile says, "But we will decide, with Her Majesty, whether bestowing titles is the...proper course at this point." Then Perrin wonders whether or not she was still considering splitting the Two Rivers from Andor, and there is mention made that she encouraged the use of the Manetheren banner. I think she will make a big push for it. He might do it to make her happy, but I don't think he has any ambition to be a king.

Other than that mysterious absence, there is nothing I can think of in any book to make me suspicious of Moiraine being a Darkfriend.

You know, that's a good question. I never thought about that one.

Just don't forget most people won't have read the book, nor will they read about 10,000 pages (and spend at least 130 $/€) just for 1 class This makes things like predictions quite hard. Umm....I don't know where you went to college, but that sounds pretty reasonable to me. I spent $500+ on materials for some of my classes. I've got textbooks that cost more than $130 each. Ten thousand pages of reading...well maybe not, but sometimes it sure seemed like it. A big challenge is definitely going to be how big the story is. Are you going to expect the students to read the entire thing in the course of a semester? Not too many people would be willing/able to do that. Though I imagine most of the students who sign up for it would be people who already know about the books. There's so MUCH you could get into, you could pretty much pick any subject and make it work.

Northwest Arizona, though I lived in Colorado 14 years and originally came from Oklahoma.

I didn't find it slow at all. I loved the prologue. I agree with Luckers' comment about the attention span of modern readers being part of the problem. A lot (not all!) of younger readers today are people who grew up in front of the tv/computer/ipod/cellphone, with short attention spans and a desire for instant gratification and have been sort of numbed to the point that they need constant, high-intensity action. Things have to get constantly faster, more violent, and louder to keep their attention; not just books but everything because we're getting desensitized. Having grown up reading classic literature, I don't find any of Jordan's work to be particularly slow at all, when compared to say, Wuthering Heights.

It's one of those things that just isn't important to the story, kind of like how we really don't see characters going to the bathroom. But historically, in our own world, people like that would either die very young from lack of proper care/medicine, be killed because something was wrong with them, or be basically kept hidden out of shame. Up until fairly recently, people born with disabilities were frequently put in insane asylums and then not spoken of any longer by their families. I imagine it would be somewhat similar in the Wheel of Time world, not necessarily the outright cruelty that many of these people went through, but at least the high mortality rate and being kept hidden away.

So hard to pick just one.... Travelling would be pretty high up there, it would be extremely useful. Healing, because I'm into that sort of thing. The Warder bond, because it would be so cool to be able to bond my husband.

I'm definitely going to have to go with Ishamael/Moridin as well. He's done way more evil things than any of the others, thanks to his not being fully trapped in the Bore, and getting loose now and then. Liandrin basically pushed over one domino that had some pretty big long-term effects. But she didn't plan any of that stuff out, it just sort of worked out. Alviarin I think has caused as much trouble, and she has done so more intentionally.

Up through Crossroads of Twilight I've read probably 5-8 times, I'm not sure. The newer books after that, 1-3 times each. I've read The Gathering Storm once, and I'm still working on Towers of Midnight. I listened to the audio book but apparently don't remember much, so I'm actually going to read it this time.

I read The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Narnia, and The Last Unicorn as a kid. I loved anything like that I could get my hands on, but I didn't know until I was older that it was a whole category of fiction that was available for me, or I would have started sooner! When I was in junior high, I was given a big box full of clothes and books as hand-me-downs from a girl down the street. In the books was a hardcover volume with a painting of a dragon on the cover entitled "The Darkest Road", by Guy Kay. I started reading, didn't know what in the world was going on, found out it was the third book of a trilogy, so I bought the first two books. Loved them. I was hooked. I raved about them to a friend, who loaned me a copy of Eye of the World the next day, and I've been a Wheel of Time addict ever since.